Notion Calendar (Cron) Review: Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Notion acquired Cron in 2022, and in January 2024 relaunched Cron as Notion Calendar with a basic Notion integration. Notion Calendar falls in under the personal productivity category.

Notion Calendar and Notion Integration

When folks saw the announcement and hype around Notion Calendar, many expected that the Notion Calendar would be embedded right in the Notion app. After all, one of Notion's main value propositions is that it is an all-in-one-tool. So when users found out that Notion Calendar is an entirely different app, many didn't see a point to use Notion Calendar.

So how does the Notion Calendar and Notion integration work?

• Notion Calendar displays items from your Notion database within your calendar
• You can now link Calendar events to Notion pages. For example, if you have a meeting, you can link a Notion page straight into the calendar event.
• You can view project timelines within Notion Calendar

With that, there are limitations. Your Notion pages must have time/date fields as a part of the page for them to display on your Notion Calendar.

In general, there has been a lot of hype from Notion about their new calendar launch, but when users realized they've simple swapped out the Cron logo for the Notion logo and added in a basic integration, they were left disappointed.

Notion Calendar Meeting Scheduler

One bonus for Notion users is that you can now use Notion Calendar to schedule your meetings via their meeting scheduling feature.

How Notion Calendar Compares

How does Notion Calendar compare to tools like Motion and Sunsama?

We've said many times that we do not recommend using Notion as a project management tool. Adding in a calendar integration adds more complexity to the tool, especially as you're now introducing an entirely new app into the mix (branded as Notion Calendar). We don't recommend going down this path if you're looking for a project management tool as to configure Notion to work for your team will take a dedicated part-time person on your team's time.

Motion in comparison to Notion Calendar, was built to be a project management tool. This means their product features are for those who want to manage projects. Notion Calendar won't automatically schedule your tasks on your calendar or help you plan your day. It won't keep you accountable to deadlines or help you see how much capacity you have available for tasks, like Motion does for example.

Notion Calendar also doesn't serve as a daily planner like Sunsama or Akiflow. In fact, if you are someone who is using Notion for tasks, we'd actually recommend using Akiflow or Sunsama with Notion over using Notion Calendar for tasks. You'll get a much better experience (considering its a separate app anyway) and both Akiflow and Sunsama will allow you to add tasks from various other tools (beyond Notion), into your calendar.

Notion Calendar Interface

Rating: _A+

Cron had one of the most beautiful calendar interfaces, it genuinely set the bar for the entire calendar category. Every shade of color and component was meticulously designed, and for that, we have huge appreciation for the team at Cron. Notion simply took all the goodness that Cron created and put it's name on it as Notion Calendar so you still get the same beautiful app, with now the ability to view items from your Notion databases right within the calendar.

Notion Calendar Limitations

Currently Notion Calendar is only available for Google Calendar with Outlook on the roadmap. As a mobile app, it's only available on iOS, with no Android yet, leaving a lot of users frustrated and disappointed. It does not support Apple calendar either.

The biggest limitation of Notion Calendar is that it not part of original Notion app. Being a separate app from Notion means that when you click on a Notion page from within Notion Calendar, it re-directs to the web version of Notion. So if you're used to using the Notion desktop app, now you now need to use the Notion web app and Notion Calendar also. You've now got three tabs open where you used to have one 😬.

Meanwhile, Notion fans are also unsure of where exactly Notion is going with Notion Calendar and are questioning some of the motives behind the companies decisions.

Pricing

Notion Calendar is free. If you're already a Notion user, we encourage you to give it a shot, even if it's just to have a prettier calendar. Just expect limited functionality with Notion and with the ability to use it as a personal planner.

Final Thoughts

If you're looking for calendar + scheduler + project management tool, you'll definitely want to check out a more project management focused tool like Motion.

If you're looking for a deep integration between a calendar app with Notion, consider Akiflow or Sunsama.

If you want a pretty calendar on your iOS phone, then perhaps use Notion. Beyond it being a pretty/free calendar app, we can't confidently recommend it as it doesn't seem to have significantly enhanced Notion's user experience beyond viewing project timelines (which to even use this feature, you must be a fairly experienced Notion user).